Messages - Logan

I've just played the demo and couldn't replicate this. Are you sure the survivors are breaching the locations you're sending them to? You might just be seeing the breaching report as they return to the location you sent them from.

So, what you might be seeing is:

1) Send all three survivors to separate locations.2) Each investigates the location they're sent to.3) One of the survivors returns to the location (the house) you sent them from. Because the house is now empty, the survivor needs to breach it again.

I can understand why this might look like the survivors are breaching locations when you've told them not to. I'll continue to double-check the movement anyway.

Thanks flap. You'll be happy to know I did track down a video memory leak that occurred when transitioning between screens (such as the diary to the map, map to relationship screen, etc). This should significantly reduce video memory pressure -- and hopefully get the game running its full duration on your netbook.

If you can Dragondave, what would be really helpful is a DirectX dump:

1) Go Start -> Run and type "dxdiag". Or in Windows 7, type "dxdiag" into the Start Menu's "Search programs and files" box.2) A window will appear called "DirectX Diagnostic Tool". Look for a button along the bottom labelled "Save All Information..."3) Save the "DxDiag.txt" text file somewhere convenient, such as the desktop.4) Email the text file to logan@screwflystudios.com.

That will provide us with a lot of technical information to help figure out what's going on.

Unfortunately that netbook is below the minimum requirements and it's unlikely we'll be able to optimise the game enough to get it running on that hardware. I'm actually surprised you got it running at all!

Though I did like your idea for disabling animations -- we're looking to add an options menu so it should be possible to put something there to skip the more intensive animations and special effects in the game, which would help with the memory issues as well.

The game is very good about cleaning up after itself, but new textures are created as the game goes on, so it's possible it was close to the limit and those additional textures tipped it over the edge.

Thanks for trying it out on the netbook -- it's interesting to hear what hardware it runs on!

We made a choice to use DirectX 9.0c as it's the last version supported by Windows XP. If the game had been built on 10 or 11, players with Windows XP would not have been able to run the game. Ideally, we'd like to support both, but that would have required a great deal of work, more than our small team could handle!

DirectX 9.0c, DirectX 10, DirectX 11, etc, are actually all different APIs and later versions are not backwards compatible. This is confusing, I know, but that's how Microsoft chose to implement the APIs and it's out of our hands. You'll find many modern games, including a lot of big ones, require you to install DirectX 9.0c in order to play.

I totally appreciate not wanting to bloat your PC, unfortunately, DX9 is used for audio as well as graphics and is required in order to play the game. Depending on the success of the game, we may look to implement a DX10/11 rendering path, but it's a bit beyond our technical abilities and budget at the moment.

Sorry to see you had a crash. Unfortunately, Diaries does require about 256-512MB of video RAM.

Can you do a DxDiag dump for me? It's fairly easy to do:

1) Go Start -> Run and type "dxdiag". Or in Windows 7, type "dxdiag" into the Start Menu's "Search programs and files" box.2) A window will appear called "DirectX Diagnostic Tool". Look for a button along the bottom labelled "Save All Information..."3) Save the "DxDiag.txt" text file somewhere convenient, such as the desktop.4) Email the text file to logan@screwflystudios.com.

Unfortunately, the game is a bit more demanding than the original Zafehouse, but we'll see what we can do to get it running better on your netbook.

You speak of sacrifice, so I am guessing that you may be able to find replacement survivors?It will be possible to find new survivors, yes. Currently we're looking to start the game with two survivors, with a possible maximum of five. Keep in mind a focus in Z:D is on relationships -- building strong, positive bonds between survivors is not a straightforward, fast affair. So if you're constantly getting survivors killed, it's going to impact your effectiveness in the long run as you try and build new relationships.

How random is the setting you start with each time you do a new game?We randomly generate the following content each game:* The survivors and their names, occupations, prejudices, portraits, backgrounds and statistics.* The distribution of all items, as well as item statistics.* The town map, including the look of buildings, the number and types of rooms they contain, as well as entrances and windows and their accessibility.* The number of zombies inside locations.* Dilemmas (special events) may not occur in every game.* Loads more. If you can think of something, ask and I'll let you know!

Would the player be able to modify starting settings?Internally, these are all settings that can be changed without a great deal of difficulty, so allowing the player control is definitely possible. We haven't made a final decision on what will be accessible in the first version of the game, but I imagine updates will expand this functionality. I should mention the game is extremely moddable -- you can add your own names and photos for locations and survivors, and using C#, you can change and add your own events, dilemmas, items and orders.